Gyms, Bootcamps & other Fitness Facilities!

Something came up in conversation last night that I decided to write about. It's relating to the attitudes some fitness facilities seem to have towards Beachbody Coaches and our fitness programs...in my personal experience, not speaking for anyone else.


A couple of months ago I walked into a local fitness facility (going to keep names out for respect) and asked if I could post a flyer for the October event in Lincoln with Tony Horton. They said "No, that's really not what were about here" and asked me to leave. My thoughts: *Really? You're not about helping people get fit and live healthier lives?* WTH?
It seems that many "facilities" are really against Beachbody, I suppose they must be afraid that our fitness programs will cause their clientelle to cancel their memberships and workout at home, leaving their facility empty and broke. REALLY? I guess if the people that run these places only want to look on the surface, then perhaps that's how they might think, but let's take a closer look and hopefully open some eyes to the POTENTIAL and GROWTH it could also bring to their facility!


When a fitness facility signs up to be a Independent Beachbody Coach (distributor), this is an EXCELLENT opportunity for them to add another stream of income to their business! Many people believe they will not stick with a workout unless they GO to some workout facility. So, those people are NEVER going to leave and they will be very good customers. Now, if you're facility is a "Coach", you have the ability to market or retail Beachbody's high-end supplements at your facility...hmmm, income stream. Now, considering Shakeology is the healthiest, most nutrient dense health shake on the market, why not offer it to your clientelle? If you're truely in business to HELP people with their health and fitness, then give them the BEST nutrition out there!


Online tools....does your facility offer ways for your clientelle to track their fitness progress, goals and teach them how and what to eat to maximize their results? If you do, how much time and $ do you spend on this? Is it individualized for each client? Beachbody has a free online supergym and fitness/nutrition tracking tools that YOU as the facility can offer to your clientelle as one more tool to help them with their health and fitness. They don't have to be using Beachbody fitness programs, it can be whatever they do at YOUR gym or bootcamp! You set them up, then they can use it whenever they want from their own computer! If they buy programs or supplements, YOU earn the commission!


Our common goal should simply be to help people live healthier lives...period. So it makes no sense to me why some facilities turn up their nose to Beachbody. To me that just makes you seem like selfish, money-hungry people who really don't care about the problem of obesity in our country. Quit looking at us as "competition" and take advantage of what we have to offer by implementing it into YOUR facility! I promise, your clientelle will keep coming to you, they like the social aspect, they may not keep up with a workout if it's left up to them and not based on a specific time they have to be at your facility! Why not keep your clientelle and build it by offering more options for them?


If you own or manage a fitness facility or boot camp, we would love to have 1 hour of your time to sit down and discuss the options and how implementing Beachbody programs and nutrition to your facility could BUILD your business! If you still don't see the potential after one hour, that's ok! We don't want to be working against you! Afterall, this is not about you, or me, or the $$, right? It's about the health and fitness of our country. It's about the 1/5 of children in the U.S. who are currently obese or overweight. It's about the 2/3 of adults in the U.S. who are currently obese or overweight. It's about the startling prediction that by the year 2030, 80% of adults in the U.S. will be obese or overweight!!! RIGHT? As people in the health and fitness industry, we should all be banning together to reverse the trend of obesity in our country, not putting up walls and fences to keep others out. I figure, if someone is working out and eating healthy, I don't care HOW or WHERE they're doing it, as long as they're doing it!
SO, is this still "not what you're all about???"

Jack LaLanne at Age 95

R.I.P. Jack LaLanne!!!!

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jack LaLanne, the fitness guru who inspired television viewers to trim down, eat well and pump iron for decades before diet and exercise became a national obsession, died Sunday. He was 96.

LaLanne died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay on California's central coast, his longtime agent Rick Hersh said.  Lalanne ate healthy and exercised every day of his life up until the end, Hersh said.  "I have not only lost my husband and a great American icon, but the best friend and most loving partner anyone could ever hope for," Elaine LaLanne, Lalanne's wife of 51 years and a frequent partner in his television appearances, said in a written statement.  Just before he had heart valve surgery in 2009 at age 95, Jack Lalanne told his family that dying would wreck his image, his publicist Ariel Hankin said at the time.  "He was amazing," said 87-year-old former "Price is Right" host Bob Barker, who credited LaLanne's encouragement with helping him to start exercising often.  "He never lost enthusiasm for life and physical fitness," Barker told The Associated Press on Sunday. "I saw him in about 2007 and he still looked remarkably good. He still looked like the same enthusiastic guy that he always was."

LaLanne (pronounced lah-LAYN') credited a sudden interest in fitness with transforming his life as a teen, and he worked tirelessly over the next eight decades to transform others' lives, too.
"The only way you can hurt the body is not use it," LaLanne said. "Inactivity is the killer and, remember, it's never too late."  His workout show was a television staple from the 1950s to the '70s. LaLanne and his dog Happy encouraged kids to wake their mothers and drag them in front of the television set. He developed exercises that used no special equipment, just a chair and a towel.

He also founded a chain of fitness studios that bore his name and in recent years touted the value of raw fruit and vegetables as he helped market a machine called Jack LaLanne's Power Juicer.  When he turned 43 in 1957, he performed more than 1,000 push-ups in 23 minutes on the "You Asked For It" television show. At 60, he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco — handcuffed, shackled and towing a boat. Ten years later, he performed a similar feat in Long Beach harbor.  He maintained a youthful physique and joked in 2006 that "I can't afford to die. It would wreck my image."
"I never think of my age, never," LaLanne said in 1990. "I could be 20 or 100. I never think about it, I'm just me. Look at Bob Hope, George Burns. They're more productive than they've ever been in their whole lives right now."  Fellow bodybuilder and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger credited LaLanne with taking exercise out of the gymnasium and into living rooms.  "He laid the groundwork for others to have exercise programs, and now it has bloomed from that black and white program into a very colorful enterprise," Schwarzenegger said in 1990.
In 1936 in his native Oakland, LaLanne opened a health studio that included weight-training for women and athletes. Those were revolutionary notions at the time, because of the theory that weight training made an athlete slow and "muscle bound" and made a woman look masculine.
"You have to understand that it was absolutely forbidden in those days for athletes to use weights," he once said. "It just wasn't done. We had athletes who used to sneak into the studio to work out.
"It was the same with women. Back then, women weren't supposed to use weights. I guess I was a pioneer," LaLanne said.

The son of poor French immigrants, he was born in 1914 and grew up to become a sugar addict, he said.
The turning point occurred one night when he heard a lecture by pioneering nutritionist Paul Bragg, who advocated the benefits of brown rice, whole wheat and a vegetarian diet.
"He got me so enthused," LaLanne said. "After the lecture I went to his dressing room and spent an hour and a half with him. He said, 'Jack, you're a walking garbage can.'"  Soon after, LaLanne constructed a makeshift gym in his back yard. "I had all these firemen and police working out there and I kind of used them as guinea pigs," he said.
He said his own daily routine usually consisted of two hours of weightlifting and an hour in the swimming pool.  "It's a lifestyle, it's something you do the rest of your life," LaLanne said. "How long are you going to keep breathing? How long do you keep eating? You just do it."
In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Dan and Jon, and a daughter, Yvonne.
Associated Press writer Polly Anderson contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.